Today, many are talking about the spiritual disciplines as a
means to spiritual growth. This past Sunday, one very accomplished teacher
claimed that as we deny ourselves and devote ourselves to fasting or to other
forms of bodily discipline, we grow spiritually and are better attuned to God
and, consequently, better able to love others.
Although I certainly share this goal, I began to think about
a number of verses that seemed to suggest otherwise:
·
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some
will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by
demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have
been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to
abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving
by those who believe and who know the truth… Rather, train yourself to be
godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all
things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. (1 Tim.
4:1-8)
Paul seems to contrast the abstention from food (or only
certain food) along with physical training – whether fasting, yoga, or
controlling our alpha or beta waves – with “godliness,” insisting on the
surpassing value of the latter. Paul goes even further to insist that
abstaining from food doesn’t bring us any closer to God:
·
But food does not bring us near to God; we are
no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. (1 Cor. 8:8)
It seems that there are certain things that open the channel
to God, but eating or not eating doesn’t seem to be one of them. Paul also
insisted that the severe “treatment of the body” failed to restrain sin:
·
"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not
touch!"? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based
on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of
wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment
of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Col.
2:21-23)
Although it’s commonly believed that subjugation of normal
bodily impulses produces spirituality, Scripture doesn’t support this idea. But
do such disciplines produce humility? Not according to Paul, who calls such
“regulations” a “false humility.” Perhaps they fail because they are merely
superficialities, failing to go deep enough to address the real issue:
·
The gifts and sacrifices being offered were not
able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They are only a matter of food
and drink and various ceremonial washings--external regulations applying until
the time of the new order. (Hebrews 9:9-10)
Clearly, fasting and ceremonial rituals failed to penetrate
to the place where real change had to take place – the conscience. Perhaps the
present-day emphasis on spiritual disciplines represents a return to the
ineffectual Mosaic rituals? I tried to respond to the teacher as gently as I
could:
·
Perhaps fasting does produce some sense of
humility and receptiveness towards God. When I fast, I think about food more
than ever – not God! But it’s not the discipline that humbles me but what I
learn about myself through the discipline – that I am fleshly and need my
Savior to help me every moment of my life.
However, he insisted that those more advanced in self-denial
and the discipline of fasting have been able to achieve a greater level of
spirituality. But was there any Scriptural support for such a claim? I
therefore began to reexamine the many verses about fasting.
Although it seems that there is much Scriptural evidence
that God responds to repentant and humbled people – and this is often
manifested through fasting, sackcloth, and self-denial - I could find no verses
that indicated that these disciplines were the means to spiritual growth. For
example, the wicked King Ahab repented with fasting, and God had mercy upon
him:
·
When Ahab heard these words, he tore his
clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around
meekly. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: "Have you
noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself,
I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in
the days of his son." (1 Kings 21:27-29)
For Ahab, fasting was not a self-transformational spiritual
discipline, but as a humble plea to God for His mercy. We see the same thing
with the King of Nineveh:
·
On the first day, Jonah started into the city.
He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh
will be overturned." The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast,
and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When the
news reached the king of Nineveh,
he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with
sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the
decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock,
taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered
with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil
ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn
from his fierce anger so that we will not perish." When God saw what they
did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not
bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. (Jonah 3:4-10; also Neh.
9:1-2; Psalm 35:13; 2 Sam. 12:15-23; Joel 1:14; 2:12)
The King of Nineveh and his subjects didn’t fast as a means
of self-improvement but as an act of self-abasement before an angry God. Fasting
also had to be the expression of a repentant heart. If it merely had been
regarded as a spiritual discipline, God would have regarded it as hypocritical.
God scorned mere ritual apart from true repentance:
·
For day after day they [Israel] seek me
out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what
is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager
for God to come near them. “Why have we fasted,” they say, “and you have not
seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” Yet on the
day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your
fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked
fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on
high… Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this
the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie
the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? (Isaiah
58:2-6)
Although Israel
had put on a good show of humility, they weren’t truly humble. Had they been, they
would have been amenable to the commands of God to treat others with love.
Their fasting was therefore self-serving, hypocritical and worthless.
We find the same teaching in the New Testament. Jesus taught
about two people who entered the Jerusalem
Temple. One was a
religious leader, proficient in the discipline of fasting. He boasted, “I fast
twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (Luke 18:12). However, this
Pharisee left the Temple
without being forgiven.
Likewise, Jesus castigated those who did not fast for the
right reasons (Mat. 6:16-18). Fasting for self enhancement wasn’t a fast unto
God, as it should have been! The Pharisees even challenged Jesus to explain why
He and His followers didn’t fast, while those of John and the Pharisees did
fast. He explained to them that new wine must be preserved in new wineskins
(Luke 5:30-39); the New Covenant required a new form or packaging - rejoicing.
Interestingly, nowhere in the New Testament is fasting ever
commanded. We find the closest facsimile to a command in Jesus’ instructions about
casting out a certain kind of demon:
·
He replied, "This kind [of demon] can come
out only by prayer." (Mark 9:29; NIV)
However, the King James Version – it’s based upon later
Greek texts – reads “by prayer and fasting.” However, our modern English
translations omit “fasting.” Nevertheless, the Book of Acts does mention fasting (Acts 13:2; 14:23), but never is
it associated with the idea of spiritual improvement. If these disciplines were
critical to spiritual maturity, it is surprising that they are not explicitly
mentioned as such.
Likewise, it seems
that other forms of self-denial are beneficial only when the denial of certain
pleasures creates room to obey the more important things - the things of God. I’ve
already mentioned Paul’s hesitation about self-denial for its own benefits. Paul inveighed against the
possible benefits of food and bodily comfort depravation (1 Tim. 4:1-8; 1 Cor.
8:8; Col. 2:21-23). The Book of Hebrews casts doubt upon the benefit of mere
rituals (Heb. 9-9-10; However, rituals can be helpful as aids to reinforce the
truth.)
Instead, the Christian life is all about denying our own agenda
in favor of affirming God’s agenda. We deny our wants in favor of obedience to
His wants. Ultimately, I think that this is the intended meaning of Biblical
fasting and sackcloth and can be summarized in this proclamation: “God, I want
to fulfill your desires not mine!” We
have to be willing to die to our agenda and to live to His:
·
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If
anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
We are not simply called upon to deny ourselves apart from
devoting ourselves to a greater ideal. We deny ourselves in order to follow
Him! Self-denial is not a virtue in itself. Instead, we might deny ourselves a
meal to give it to someone else!
Well, if we don’t
grow through these spiritual disciplines, how do we grow and mature as
Christians? Although I admit that we can benefit by abstaining from certain
foods and drink – and recovering from alcohol addiction is a great benefit – I
don’t think that these successes qualify as spiritual growth. Instead,
Scripture identifies the source of spiritual growth as God Himself (although we
also rely upon His grace to deal with alcoholism):
·
Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like
shifting shadows. (James 1:17)
·
For who makes you different from anyone else?
What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do
you boast as though you did not? (1 Cor. 4:7)
Consequently, it is God who should be given the thanks for
all spiritual growth, even for our hard work:
·
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his
grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet
not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Cor. 15:10)
However, this raises two separate questions: “What role do
we play in our maturity and what are the means of growth?” First of all, we
need to be clear that we cannot do anything without Him. We cannot grow
spiritual, even in the slightest way, without Him (John 3:19-20; 6:44; 1 Cr.
2:14). It wasn’t that Paul’s hard work was irrelevant. Instead, Paul recognized
that whatever good he had achieved resulted from the fact that God was working
through him. Jesus said as much in referring to us as helpless sheep. He also
taught:
·
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No
branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you
bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a
man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can
do nothing. (John 15:4-5)
The fact that we can do absolutely nothing of any real worth
without Him is the uniform message of Scripture. This was certainly Paul’s
confession:
·
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim
anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. (2 Cor. 3:5)
Scripture is clear that God is the source of spiritual
growth:
·
For we are God's workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(Ephes. 2:10)
·
Being confident of this, that he who began a
good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
(Philip.1:6)
·
From whom [God] the whole body, supported and
held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
(Col. 2:19)
If this is all true, then our proper posture before our God
must be one of humility. In fact, this is the posture He commands and requires
for our transformation. Jesus had warned:
·
"I tell you that this man, rather than the
other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)
The Pharisee had sought to enhance himself through his
various practices and therefore left the Temple
alienated from God. Meanwhile, the man who knew and confessed that he was a
rank sinner in need of mercy was “exalted.”
Life must start with dying; the way up is the road down.
Humility must precede any real spiritual transformation:
·
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty
hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because
he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7; James 4:6)
How does humility work? By humbling ourselves, we confess
our sins; we clothe ourselves in prayer because we’ve come to realize that we
can’t trust in ourselves; we devote ourselves to His Word because we have come
to see that our own thinking and judgment has so failed us; we obey Him because
our own pursuits have led us into the killing fields. And so humility is the
soil from which grows those vines – trust, prayer, Bible-meditation, and
obedience - that connect us to the roots.
However, we too have a role. The Spirit applies His
transformative medicine alongside of our trust, prayer, Bible-meditation, and
obedience. Although Paul claimed that those under his ministry had been
transformed into an epistle of Christ, he gave credit to the Spirit:
·
You show that you are a letter from Christ, the
result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit
of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2
Cor. 3:3)
While we are the product of the ministry of the Word, even
more so are we a product of the Spirit applying the Word to our heart. Paul
went on to explain that the Jewish nation also had the Scriptures, but it
wasn’t profitable for them because they had a veil over their heart, preventing
the truth from penetrating. However, now that the Spirit has removed our hard
outer barrier, we have been freed to see the truth and to become transformed by
it:
·
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit
of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as
in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image
from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Cor. 3:17-18)
Paul later showed that “beholding…the glory of the Lord” is
the same thing as beholding the truths about God (2 Cor. 4:4-6). Transformation
occurs when the Spirit applies the truths of God to our heart, as Jesus
inferred:
·
"If you abide in My word, you are My
disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
(John 8:31-32)
Similarly, the Bible teaches that we are nourished by the
truth (1 Tim. 4:6; Rom.
12:2) – it’s our growth food (1 Peter 2:2; Heb 5:12-14). It is Scripture that
keeps us anchored, confident and secure (Eph. 4:14).
Of course, we need to ask:
·
You do not have, because you do not ask God.
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you
may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)
We also need to obey, to be faithful with what we have
already received:
·
In fact, though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all
over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being
still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But
solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to
distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)
If we don’t use it, we loose it! However, if we do use it,
we grow in discernment and wisdom.
Scripture says a lot of things about spiritual growth.
However, it says little to nothing about growth associated with fasting or
other forms of self-denial. Although these practices aren’t unbiblical, they
should be performed with a Biblical understanding.
One last thought – we should never regard our self-denial or
sacrifices as earning anything from God. It’s all about God’s grace and our
trusting Him for it. When we believe that we have earned something from Him, we
deny that our blessings are strictly a matter of grace.
I hope to send the teacher a copy of this response. Please
pray that he receives it well.
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